Product Engineering NPI Team Lead

About the role

The Product Engineering NPI Team at Fluidstack is responsible for taking hardware from design release to repeatable production across various Fluidstack products, including compute racks and medium-voltage switchgear. This role involves building a stage-gate NPI process that works across different product families, managing a TPM team, and ensuring portfolio-level program visibility.

Responsibilities

• Build the NPI process from scratch, including gate definitions, readiness criteria, and ECO and change discipline applicable to products ranging from racks to MV switchgear.
• Lead and develop the NPI TPM team, allocating resources across 6 product families while maintaining clarity on ownership and decision-making.
• Own portfolio-level program visibility, providing status and risk reports that are detailed enough for leadership to hear about issues before others.
• Set the transfer-to-manufacturing standards with manufacturing engineering, defining exit criteria that a program must meet before production takes ownership.
• Hold the RACI between TPMs and engineering technical leads to ensure no decision waits on a debate about whose call it is.

Requirements

• 10+ years in NPI or program management at a hardware OEM or ODM, with 3+ years leading TPM or NPI teams.
• Built stage-gate processes yourself, defining gates, readiness criteria, and ECO discipline, not just operating inside a process someone else designed.
• Led TPM or NPI teams and developed the people in them, not just assigning their work.
• Managed programs spanning multiple product lines simultaneously and can demonstrate how you kept them all accountable.
• Killed a program too late at least once, and can name the signals you missed and what you watch for now.
• Keep NPI lightweight enough that engineers use it instead of routing around it.

Qualifications

• Bonus: experience with portfolio management tooling, working with products spanning compute and power equipment, managing manufacturing transfers at new plants, or building teams from zero.

Skills

• Strong leadership and project management skills.
• Experience in setting and enforcing NPI standards and processes.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and maintain program integrity.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Benefits

• Fluidstack is committed to pay equity and transparency.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.
• Committed to accommodating qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Pay

$208K - $263K

Schedule

N/A